what are you tryin to say, kid?

Yesterday I was outside with the kids and we were discussing a very important topic – the superhero, Underdog.

“Underdog is a good guy and he saves people and he can fly because he has a cape!” one little girl told me.

So I asked the girls, “Does that mean that if I had a cape, I could fly?”

The little girls looked at me and then at eachother and then one told me hesitantly, “Maybe, but you would need a really big cape.”

snow in October

I’ve told you all before that one of my least favorite household chores is laundry. It is truly the chore that never ends. Because even if you were to wash every piece of laundry in the house, you would only be “caught up” for about half a day – and then your whole family would want to take off their clothes and put pajamas on, leaving you with another pile of laundry. Those turds!

In my case, it is a little more fun to do laundry than it used to be. A few months ago, I was trying to dry a load of clothes and when I pressed “start” absolutely nothing happened. After investigating the situation, Bryan and I realized that our dryer had been overworked by a washer that wasn’t doing its job. Meaning we had a broken washer and dryer. At first I was really upset – if I don’t do laundry every day, we are buried under a mountain of it very quickly. Or worse, Bryan has to go to school wearing swim trunks and a coconut bra. So we didn’t waste any time getting to Sears to find a solution.

I like to shop, that’s no secret. Now, shopping for major appliances isn’t my favorite, but I had been salivating over my friend’s front-loading washer and dryer for months and I knew that was what I had to have. And a week later they were in my house, washing my clothes. The boys and I sat and watched the clothes and the little soap bubbles go around and around through the window for a long time. It was love. I probably would’ve slept in the laundry room those first nights if I could have. This was WAY better than a new crock pot!

So yesterday I was washing some clothes of the boys. Before any kids came, I put in a load while it was still dark, careful to not wake up the boys. I had stuffed the washer full to try and fit in everything. If you want to try this at home, fill your washer as full as you can. Then put in four more things. Then three more things.

As soon as the usual daycare chaos settled into a dull roar, I ran into the laundry room to change the clothes from the washer to the dryer. I pulled open the door and out spilled some laundry. But this laundry looked like it was covered in slushy snow. Wyatt picked up a chunk of the slush and ate it before I could even stop him. I knew what had happened – I had accidentally washed a diaper. Not the cloth kind, the disposable kind. And it didn’t take me long to guess who might have put a diaper in the laundry basket. I put my head down on the edge of the washer and tried to keep myself from crying. Not only was all my laundry covered in some mysterious polymer, but it had spilled out all over the floor, my son was trying to eat it, and five other kids were standing at the edge of the laundry room using tinker toys as drumsticks and “drumming” wildly on the door. The dull roar was over.

Thank the good Lord for dustbusters. And Tylenol. And cookies in the kitchen for everyone while Miss Laura cleans the laundry room.

you learn something new every day

Things I’ve learned this week
1. A one year old can fit four Dora the Explorer dominoes in his mouth before he gags and hurls all over the place.
2. Whoever made up the phrase, “No use crying over spilled milk,” probably didn’t spill a half gallon under the microwave and all over the stove while they were making grilled cheese for six hungry kids.
3. If a three year old comes to you and says, “I almost about pooped my pants!” there is no use in hurrying to the bathroom because he/she probably already did.
4. Do not feed Fiber One poptarts to little kids if they are going to be staying at your house for the rest of the day. Just don’t do it.
5. And the last, best thing that I learned this week was this: the laundry can probably be done faster without the help of my two sons BUT it is more fun to let them help me in a dark laundry room, using their flashlights.

I need a minivan

As most of you already know, I drink Diet Dr. Pepper. I need it every day. I try to limit myself to two or three cans a day which I know is terrible but it is what allows me to be human in the morning. It helps me “play well with others.” Unfortunately, I occasionally run out of my precious Diet Dr. Pepper. Or, sometimes my husband drinks the last one without telling me or replacing it. He is always very sorry afterwards, on many levels.

Earlier this summer, I had run out of my nectar from heaven and I was getting desperate. This wouldn’t be a problem for most people, right? You would get into the car, drive to any gas station, fast food restaurant, grocery store, whatever, and buy yourself a cold one. But for me it is a problem in that I had five kids with me that day. And I own a car that does not accommodate five car seats. In my desperation, I came up with an idea. There is a gas station that is probably half a mile from our house. I can almost see it from home. So, I put the two babies into my double stroller and put the two next youngest kids into the wagon. The last kid was my own so he had to suck it up and walk. I attempted to push the stroller, which is approximately ten feet long and 300 lbs while I pulled the wagon. It was not easy. We walked and walked and I was sweating profusely and my hand was getting a cramp from steering the stroller one-handed. Two kids had started to cry and there were buzzards circling overhead. Then I looked back and to my dismay saw that we hadn’t even gone a block yet. Defeated, I turned our little parade around and went home to think of another way to get through the day.

But that isn’t the point of this story. The point of this story is that I was telling a friend about this day. And he told me, “Next time you get that desperate, please call me.”

I thought it was so nice that he would offer to take time out of his day to bring me a drink. I wouldn’t have thought of asking someone to bring me a drink – it seems so silly. But now that he had offered…

“Oh, I don’t know – I would feel bad asking someone to get me a Diet Dr. Pepper and bring it to me,” I told him.

And he replied, “No, I don’t want to bring you a drink. I want to take a picture of you trying to get to the gas station with all those kids.”

What a turd bucket.

I don't even like corndogs

As a daycare provider, I have the option to be in something called the Food Program. Basically, I fill out tons of paperwork and promise not to feed the kids anything that tastes good, and they reimburse me each month for some of my food. It’s worth it because six little kids can eat a truckload of Ritz crackers each day. And since I don’t have a fountain of free juice flowing in my backyard, I will take all the reimbursements I can get. I normally make like $3.00 an hour but with my Food Program money, I make almost $4.00!!! And lots of hugs. Sticky little hugs.

So last weekend I was trying to come up with some new menus for the kids. I have to have three weeks’ worth of menus planned and they just rotate over and over again. This seems like it wouldn’t be a hard task, but it turns out that it DOES take a rocket scientist to come up with 30 different meals that little kids will eat. It’s impossible. Because in addition to being something that they will eat, it has to meet the Food Program requirements. Here is an example:
I found out that little kids will eat corn dogs which made me really happy because they are frozen and all I have to do is heat them up – and add a milk portion, a fruit, and a vegetable, but whatever. The problem is that the food has to be labeled for the child nutrition program (which means it must be bought in bulk from a place like Sam’s). So I got a gigantic box of corn dogs with the appropriate label and started serving them up only to be told after I bought a box of 50 that they MUST be all beef. But alas, my corn dogs are beef and turkey.

It makes me wonder – who made up that rule? And why? We all know that hot dogs are made of knee caps and eyelids. So why does it matter if they are kneecaps from a cow or from a turkey? Are bovine eyelids more nutritious than turkey eyelids? I don’t know. Fortunately, I can ponder that question as I eat the remaining 45 corn dogs. Because I would never break the rules on such an important matter and feed them to the daycare kids. I guess now I have to scratch corn dogs off the menu – tuna casserole, here we come! Mmmm, tuna kneecaps…

first day back

Today is the big day. Or at least one of the big days. It is the first day of school for teachers in the area which means I will have five or six of my closest friends with me again starting now. Last night I could hardly sleep because I was so,…er,…excited.

I was thinking about what makes home daycare a hard job. Contrary to popular belief, I do not sit on the couch eating bon-bons all day and watching soap operas. I prefer to eat my bon-bons in the kitchen, yo. Really, though, what makes it hard is that I do not enjoy chaos. And there are moments, mainly the moments around lunch and preparing to go outside, that feel like chaos. When everyone needs my help at the same time and I just don’t have enough arms and legs to handle the job. I’ve found that there are a few ways to control chaos but only two are legal. One is to make a pretty solid routine and stick to it each day. I try to do this. The other is to have fun and educational activities for the kids to do. This one is harder than having a routine because it requires me to do a lot of planning. Little kids have a short attention span. Like, three minutes. So on a typical day, I have to come up with roughly three hundred activities. And don’t even think about doing the same thing two days in a row!

If you happen to think of me today, know that we are having the time of our lives making pretzel necklaces and Lego towers. The time of our lives. Somebody get me a bon-bon.

thank heaven...for rubber gloves

I’m sorry I haven’t been posting anything. The truth is that my life hasn’t felt very funny lately. My job requires me to be home from 7:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. There are some days when I only leave the house to watch kids play in the backyard (does that even count as leaving the house?) And I fell into a little slump thinking that you have to leave the house to experience “funny.” But then I got a little surprise that I think was sent to help me out of my slump.

I’ve talked before about how I like surprises – most surprises. And working with kids, I get a lot of surprises. Like finding a handful of corn in my tennis shoe. Or finding out that the new coloring book came with a bonus page of stickers – which are now all stuck to the TV screen. Surprise!

Most of the daycare kids that come to our house bring a little backpack with them each day with extra clothes. Lately they have all realized that an easy way to get each other’s goat is to take the backpack of another child and say, “This is mine!” And that produces immediate screaming and usually is followed by some loud chasing and eventually ends in someone losing an eye or at least spending two minutes in the time out chair. Being the problem solver that I am, I thought really hard about how I could stop this daily insanity. And it came to me – why not just move the backpacks to a place where the kids can’t get to them? I know, why didn’t I think of that like six months ago, right?

So now the backpacks are all stashed safely in the laundry room on top of the washing machine during the day. The only problem being that if I need to do laundry, I have to move them all. But trust me, I’d rather move a million backpacks than listen to, “That’s mine!” “No, it’s mine! Give it back to me!” “Aaaaah!” all day long.

Well, this week I was experiencing a semi-calm moment with the kids and took the opportunity to try and get a load of towels into the washer. I raced into the laundry room and picked up the backpacks and there it was – sitting right on top of my white washing machine lid – a turd.

I didn’t have to smell it to be sure – in my line of work, I see a lot of turds (heck, I’m practically a turd expert) so I knew what it was right away. I have no idea if it came from one of the backpacks or really where it came from at all. I was just a little surprised to see it looking up at me, all brown and smelly. How did it get there? Who did it come from? Why was it on my washing machine? What did it want from me?

I stood there for a minute, just looking at it, my face expressionless. Then I got out my state-mandated rubber gloves and without saying anything to any of the kids, I laid the little turd to rest in the garbage can on the back porch. I didn’t even say a moment of silence.

But honestly, I owe that little turd a big thank you. It breathed new life into my day. So to that turd I say, “Two thumbs up, little friend.”

let's have a round of applause for awkward moments...

I’m a big fan of manners and doing “the right thing” in situations, whatever that means. I’ve been trying to teach Wesley manners (he calls them ‘matters’) since about five minutes after his birth. I’m not talking manners like: don’t use the corner of the tablecloth to get meat out of your teeth (and you know who you are…) I mean more like: send a thank-you note for wedding gifts, etc.

Last week, I was outside playing with the kids. Okay, really I was trying to keep kids from hitting one another with plastic golf clubs but the point is that we were all outside. And there was a lot of noise. The sounds of plastic clubs banging on the wooden fence, the sounds of children shouting and crying, dogs barking, the voices in my head telling me to just get in the car and drive away, lots of noise. And over all that noise, I heard a female grown-up voice yelling something.

At first I was confused when I heard it but then I answered, “Are you trying to find us?” Our yard is surrounded by a six foot wooden fence so I couldn’t really see anyone.

The mystery voice answered me, “I came to tell you that my husband died. He had a massive heart attack and died.”

It felt as if I had just woken up and someone was trying to make me solve an algebraic equation. I realized after a minute that it was my next door neighbor. I searched my memory for her name – was it Dorothy or Delores or Norma???

Here’s what makes this situation awkward – I can’t see her, we are shouting at eachother over a six foot tall fence, I don’t know her husband (he worked in the oil field and was rarely home), the kids are all suddenly intrigued by the voice on the other side of the fence and shouting who-knows-what back at her, I wasn’t even sure I had her name right, and I wasn’t entirely sure that she was SAD about this death. For all I knew, she could have been thrilled. I mean, the guy was home like three days a month and then it just seemed like he spent the whole time cleaning out his truck. Maybe she had a great insurance policy and was packing her bags for Fiji.

I went with my gut and tried sympathy. “Oh, Norma, I’m so sorry. Is there anything we can do? How are you holding up?”

Luckily this seemed to be what I was supposed to say.

Is there a protocol for situations like this? There should be. There should be a book that tells how to handle awkward situations of all kinds. In fact, I’m going to write one, maybe. It will cover everything from “Giving condolences for a death to a mystery neighbor over a six foot tall fence” to “How to politely decline an invitation to view a stranger’s ‘Scab Collection.’”

It’s sure to be a bestseller.

mom, you might not want to read this one

Internet friend, I have got to share something with you. It’s not the kind of story I would share with, say, a stranger on an elevator or at the dinner table (well maybe Bryan’s family would but mine sure wouldn’t…). I’ve tried to keep it to myself for so long but I just can’t anymore. So I’m glad you and I know one another well enough for me to share this with you.

When I first started doing home daycare, there was one little guy who always had a runny nose. You know how parts of this world have frozen soil that never thaws called permafrost? Well this little guy has a condition on his upper lip that I call Permasnot. He seems to always be sick. He doesn’t just seem to always be sick – he IS always sick. But he isn’t one of those selfish kids who won’t share – he shares his illnesses with others very nicely.

During one of the first weeks he came his mom nonchalantly mentioned as she dropped him off that he had Thrush. She didn’t make it sound like a big deal at all. She said he just had white stuff inside his mouth and it gave him a little blister on his lip. I didn’t think much about it. Even when I found Wyatt’s pacifier in his mouth.

So fast forward about a week to me getting dressed on a Saturday. As my shirt lightly brushed my chest, I felt some severe pain. It went on all day and I also realized Wyatt had been fussy and that my pain got worse when I fed him (breastfed him.) Being a mystery solver by nature, I pried open his little mouth. It looked like someone had painted his cheeks with White Out. Suddenly, the word Thrush popped into my mind.

After a little internet research, I learned that Thrush is basically a yeast infection. IN YOUR MOUTH. And that my sweet baby had passed me that yeast infection. But it wasn’t in my mouth – it was ON MY NIPPLE! I immediately called his doctor who told me how to treat both of us.

But instead of getting better, it got worse. The next day I had a crack the size of the Grand Canyon that looked like it was going to bleed. And let me explain to you how it felt. If you’d like, I’ll give you a scenario that is comparable and you can act it out at home, too. First, take out your nipple. (If you are male, a small piece of skin from you genitalia will work.) Next, find a cheese grater. Firmly hold the cheese grater in one hand and the nipple in the other. Then, rub the grater over the nipple constantly for ten minutes or so (to simulate nursing a baby.) Repeat every three hours.

I shouldn’t have to explain why it would be hard for a wound to heal under these conditions. But within two weeks, it had pretty much healed. I was glad. Until this week when the same affliction has occurred on the other side. Only it’s worse this time.

Do you think this is what the phrase “occupational hazard” means?

if this house is a-rockin'....

Friday was a rough day. Rough as in yes, I’ll have a vodka on the rocks. Lunch was a complete disaster. My daycare is on the food program which means that I promise to feed the kids healthy meals and fill out mountains of paperwork and the government pays me back for some of the food. And that also means they have the right to come to my house at any time during operating hours and check up on me. It’s the ultimate Big Brother. Well, Friday I was happily cooking tacos for the kids and I got a phone call. It was Big Brother (in the form of a woman named Pauline) and she was coming to my house to do a check at lunch.

I follow the rules. I’m doing everything by the book. But I’ve also talked to other people who operate home daycares and they all have horror stories about how terrible the food program people are. Immediately, I panicked. I saw that the lettuce “best by” date was the day before and threw away the entire bag. Then I tripped on the way to the table with the corn, spilling it all over the place. Winnie, apparently having given up buttered corn for Lent at some point in her life, stood and watched as I frantically tried to sweep it up. By the way, have you ever tried to sweep up a bowlful of buttered corn? It’s like riding a BigWheel on a gravel road.

The lady showed up late which was okay by me because not one kid ate anything – note to self: Self, don’t serve tacos anymore. The visit went fine. She was quite nice and was more interested in the wooden playhouse in our backyard than in what I had served for lunch. And to think that I spilled corn for her.

I made it to naptime and thought the rest of the day would be smooth sailing. I had all the kids laying down and I was settling in to watch Maury on mute (probably not good for little kids to hear the show but since they can’t read the closed captioning…) I was just about to hear who the father of Shawnda’s baby was when the doorbell rang. Six times. I jumped up as fast as I could and got to the door. I threw the door open and saw my little neighbor boy.

He just turned four years old and he loves to come over to our house, usually at really bad times. Like the minute I return home from the hospital after having a baby or moments after Wesley pukes in the back seat of the car or while five kids are sleeping in my house.

I was mad – I explained to him that he CANNOT ring the doorbell at our house. He said he wanted to play with Wesley. I told him Wesley was asleep (or had been until the doorbell rang) and that I would come get him when Wesley woke up. And then I told him again not to ring the bell. I was probably a little mean but at four years old, he doesn’t take hints well so you have to be pretty blunt.

Two minutes later, the doorbell rings six more times. I think at that point, smoke might have come out of my ears. I was all out of nice. I threw open the door and said in a not very nice voice, “I told you not to ring the doorbell. What do you want?”

“I just saw a airplane fly over you guys’s house and I wanted to tell Wesley if he could come outside and see it.”

Once again, I informed him that Wesley was sleeping and that he shouldn’t ring our doorbell.

I kid you not, one minute later, the doorbell rang again. By this point, all my kids were awake and I was ready to commit a heinous crime against a certain little person. I threw the door open and saw him smiling up at me again. “What do you want?”

“I wanted to tell you that the mail guy just put yall’s mail in the mailbox.”

Just to make sure that he didn’t miss my point this time, I told him to go home.

Added to my to-do list: disconnect doorbell.

because they only take their first steps once

I was watching Oprah one afternoon and I saw something interesting. There was this guy who is the founder of an internet company. He makes gazillions of dollars but instead of having a big flashy office, he has a little cubicle with all the rest of the workers at his company. He was talking about how much he loves what he does. His advice to everyone was this: find a way to get paid to do what you love.

And so I started thinking…what do I love to do? Immediately I knew. But I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to pay me to sleep or watch TV. I know – isn’t that ridiculous?!?

Due to circumstances in life, I recently started a home daycare. If I said I love it, I would be lying. But I like kids and I have a strong desire to take care of my own boys (as opposed to putting them in daycare so I can work) so it seemed like the most logical choice.

I began the process of being licensed back in November. It was a long and painful process that involved speaking on the phone with numerous government workers who obviously hated their jobs and me for making them work.

I try to think positively about the whole situation, even when someone else’s child is handing me his booger. Which happens several times each day. And the most positive thing is that I do get to take care of my own kiddos, still. A few days ago, one of the little boys who stays with us was crying after his mom left. I was comforting him and Wesley wiggled up next to me. “Why is he crying, Mama?” he asked.

“He misses his Mommy. She had to go to work and that makes him sad. You know, Wesley, you are really lucky because your Mommy gets to stay with you all day long.”

But I know that I am still the lucky one because I don’t have to go flip burgers or type memos for some guy named Ed or floss other people’s teeth. I get to be with my boys and I don’t have to miss all the sweet things that they do and the milestones that only a Mommy can appreciate. Even if it means I have to wipe five other noses (and butts) each day, it’s what I want to do.